God laid down the laws governing these trials. If a person killed someone using a metal
implement, that person would be designated a murderer and had to be executed. Similarly, anyone who killed
another with a stone would be executed. The same law applied to someone who killed another by punching or
manhandling him, or throwing something at him.

The act of
execution was to be carried out by the nearest relation of the deceased, known as the “avenger of blood”.

However, if
the person causing death did so accidentally and without evident intention of causing harm, then the matter
would go before the assembly for judgment. The assembly might decide that the accused was innocent, and send him
back to the city of refuge to which he first fled. The man then had to stay there until the death of the high
priest, after which he could return home. If, however, the person strayed outside the city of refuge, he would
become fair game for the “avenger of blood”.

God ordered
that nobody could be put to death on the testimony of only one witness. There had to be several witnesses to the
murder. A murderer’s life could not be ransomed. The principle of a life for a life was not
negotiable.

God
stipulated that bloodshed pollutes land. Atonement could not be made for land where blood had been shed except
by the blood of the person who had shed it.

SINGING

Commentary
on the 43rd parsha (portion) of the Torah. The Torah consists of the five books of Moses, the first part of
the Old Testament.

To get to grips with this parsha, our Supermaven, Sigmund Albert Spinoza, interviews
Methuselah Solomon (an Ancient Elder). Supermaven is a modern philosopher who is trying to understand Judaism
and how we got where we are.

SAS:Methuselah, I’m sorry to
hear you have a headache.

MS:I heard you were coming to visit. My headaches go when you do.

SAS:Well, I don’t think I’ll vex you overmuch today. I find lots in this portion to admire.
There are clear signs here that our legal system was becoming more adaptive and sophisticated. Our early
practices were pretty barbaric, though, as this portion shows.

MS:Here we go …

SAS:You surely have to admit that the “avenger of blood” rule was a mistake. No matter the
apparent justness of their cause, these people were ordinary citizens who then found themselves duty bound to
inflict death on others. You turned members of your male population into potential executioners. This was not
the way to create a society of peaceful and gentle-minded souls.

MS:These were primitive times in which society had to be strictly regulated. Bear in mind
that before these rules, a much more violent, less regulated, anarchistic situation prevailed. These laws
were a great improvement—we see the beginnings of a fair and just system. Before this, the people did not
have any legal apparatus at their disposal. In this system, when a person killed an enemy in a clear cut case
of homicide, there was no need for delay. The blood avenger, or go’el, carried out his duty on behalf
of his family. Who better to carry out God’s penalty of a life for a life than the victim’s
next-of-kin?

SAS:The last person you want to carry out the penalty is the victim’s next-of-kin. You create
the potential for a blood feud between families. You also create the possibly that the second slaying will be
more brutal than the first. The “avenger of blood” has a license to kill and he can do it in his own time.
You make of him a premeditated killer, a hunter and a bloodthirsty executioner. I bet half of these
executions were public affairs, with aggrieved family members gathering to watch.

MS:Are you taking issue with the death penalty itself, the way it was carried out, or
both?

SAS:I think the death penalty is barbaric although no doubt you can mount a reasonable defense
of the practice. My first concern here is the method of punishment. At least put in place an official
executioner. Provided the person’s guilt was firmly established, he should have been dispatched privately,
and as painlessly as possible.

MS:The great virtue of this system, though, was that it highlighted the social dimension of
crime. A murder impacted powerfully on the victim’s family and its friendship circle. The killer’s penalty
was not only his death, but his brief time of confrontation with the “blood avenger” and other family
members. Those people most affected, the victim’s family, were the fitting and proper people to exact
punishment.

SAS:I disagree with you one hundred percent. This
method of retributive punishment made the crime more personal than social. Instead of showing the community
that a murder of a citizen was an act against the greater society, it made it a small matter between
families. If a community is bent on execution, it should make such an execution a community matter, and carry
it out in a uniform way on behalf of all the people – not just the victim’s family.

MS:When you talk of an act on behalf of all the people, you are making it all very abstract.
Most people are unaffected by a killing and do not think of an execution as an act carried out for their
benefit. The part of society most affected by a killing is the victim’s family. Justice meted out for their
particular benefit and satisfaction is the same justice that other members of society would benefit from
under other circumstances.

SAS:That’s a clever argument, Methuselah, but it has serious flaws. Laws should be general,
and not personalized. By arguing that the victim’s family
directly represents society’s interests, you imbue that family with far too much power. Its anger and its
cravings for blood are afforded judicial weight. You sanction retributive cruelty and the ethic of
revenge.

History

SINGING

If you’d like to know more about the real history of our
extended Jewish family, read on.

The Yom Kippur War

The Yom Kippur War, as it known by the Israelis, was fought from 6 October to 26
October 1973. It was started by Egypt and Syria, who launched surprise attacks against Israel by crossing the
cease-fire lines in the Sinai and Golan Heights on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur.

Egypt and Syria wanted to reclaim the land lost in the Six Day War. They prepared for
war by launching military exercises near the Suez Canal and the Golan Heights, respectively. Aman, the IDF’s Directorate of Military Intelligence, did not believe war
was imminent. Israeli Minister of Defence, Moshe Dayan, did not order a pre-emptive strike or order a full
mobilization of troops.

Egypt and Syria launched lightning strikes that swept them past Israeli defensive
lines in the two war theatres. For the first few days they made significant advances.

In the meantime, Israeli officials flew to Washington to ask for weapons to be
airlifted to Israel. President Richard Nixon was put on the spot, because Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal warned
of an oil embargo against the USA if it rearmed Israel. Nixon, however, decided to help Israel. One deciding
factor was that, under pressure, Israel might have used nuclear weapons. The USA undertook a massive airlift
of conventional weapons including tanks, missiles and jets.

Israel managed to stem the
advancing tides and then launched counter-offensives.By 10 October, the Syrians had been pushed back to the pre-war border. Israeli Prime Minister Golda
Meir ordered the Israeli forces to press on, and they advanced to within 40km of Damascus by 14
October.By 15 October Israel was ready for a counter-attack in the Sinai
theatre.Operation Abiray-Lev (“Stouthearted Men”) was launched and a hole was opened in the Egyptian
defense.

By the end of the war Israeli forces were 100km from
Cairo.

The UN Security Council passed Resolution 338, calling
for a ceasefire on 22 October. Hostilities continued, but after two further resolutions were passed, the war
ended on 26 October. Israel suffered serious losses, with roughly 2700 troops killed and some 8000 wounded.
Close to 500 tanks were destroyed and approximately 150 planes lost.

Every Shabbat we read five short sayings that express, with typically Jewish wit and
humor, insightful reflections on this life of ours.

SINGING

Here are tonight’s sayings:

·Even a secret agent can’t lie to a Jewish mother. (Peter Malkin)

·My grandmother was a Jewish juggler; she used to worry about six things at once.
(Richard Lewis)

·Alcohol may muddle the head, but troubles take it off altogether.

·A Jewish woman had two chickens. One got sick, so she made chicken soup out of the other one to
help the sick one get well. (Henny Youngman)

·Anytime a person goes into a delicatessen and orders pastrami on white bread,
somewhere a Jew dies. (Milton Berle)

SINGING

Celebration of Great Lives

Every Friday night we celebrate the achievements of our Jewish family in contributing
to changing the world for the better and having an extraordinary impact on those around
them.

Helena Rubinstein
(1870-1965)

Born Chaja Rubinstein in Krakow, Poland, she
immigrated to Australia in 1902. She opened a shop in Melbourne, sold skin creams and changed her name to
Helena. The shop prospered and Helena left it in the care of her sister, Ceska, while she went to London to
expand her business. She met and married an American journalist and they had two children and eventually
settled in the USA. There, Rubinstein opened a string of beauty salons which became popular with the
department stores. An inspired innovator, Rubinstein trained her sales people to teach skin care and dietary
plans. The business gave employment to many women. She went on to develop a line of male cosmetics too. In
1938, after divorcing her husband, Rubinstein married a Georgian prince who was 20 years her junior. A strong
supporter of Israel, Rubinstein founded the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion of Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv. In
1953 she established the Helena Rubinstein Foundation that provided money for health and medical research. It
also donated money to the American Israel Cultural Foundation and provided scholarships to Israelis. In 1959
she represented the USA cosmetics industry at the American National Exhibition in Moscow. She died at 94,
working from her sick bed until the last.

SINGING

Ayn Rand
(1905-1982)

Born Alissa Rosenbaum, in St. Petersburg, Rand was
an atheistic Jew who eschewed religion and mysticism. She was awarded a degree in history from the University
of Leningrad in 1924. When she was 21, she immigrated to the USA where she scraped a living in the wardrobe
department of RKO movies in Hollywood. After her stage play, Night of January 16th, was
produced on Broadway in 1935, Rand had enough money to write full-time. However, her first novel, We the Living (1936) was not well received. She then wrote a short novel,
Anthem, and saw a stage version of We the Living called The
Unconquered fail to awaken interest. Getting nowhere, she started reading screenplays for Paramount. Her
big break came after The Fountainhead was published in May 1943.
It received lukewarm reviews at first, but word spread and by 1949 it had sold half a million copies. In that
same year, a film version starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal appeared, with Rand as screenplay writer. In
1951 she and her husband, Frank O’Connor, moved to New York and Rand became the fulcrum of a social circle
that embraced her ideas. Her final novel, Atlas Shrugged, appeared
in 1957 and dealt with philosophical themes that Rand used to create her philosophy of Objectivism – an ethic
embracing the primacy of reason, individualism and free-market capitalism. This philosophy was promoted
through the Nathaniel Branden Institute, Branden being a friend and sometime lover. Rand’s ideas bred
enthusiastic discipleship, and economist Alan Greenspan (who later became chairman of the Federal Reserve)
was part of her inner circle. She had many critics, though, and her influence declined from the late ‘60s.
Still popular in some circles today her books have sold more than 25 million
copies.

LONG
VERSION

Parshat Masei

a.k.a Giving a Murderer His Due(Numbers 33:1 – 36:13)

The portion reminds us of the 42 places in which the people made camp during their 40 years of
wandering in the wilderness.

It was on the plains of Moab, next to the Jordan across from Jericho, that God gave these
instructions to Moses: “When you cross the Jordan, drive out the Canaanites from the land. Destroy their
idols and their places of worship. Take their land and settle on it, for I have given it to you. Divide the
land by lot according to the size of your tribes. Any Canaanites you don’t drive out will be problems for you
forever.”

God then outlined the boundaries of the land where the people would live. Moses ordered the
Israelites to divide up the land by lot between nine and a half tribes – the tribes of Reuben, Gad and half
of the tribe of Manasseh had already received their inheritance on the east side of the
Jordan.

God set down the names of the men who would oversee the apportioning of the land as the people’s
inheritance. He also told Moses that the people should give the Levites towns to live in as well as grazing
lands around the towns for their livestock.Six of the towns given to these priests would become cities of
refuge for those fleeing after accidentally killing someone. Additionally, another 42 towns had to be given
to the Levites. A person fleeing to a town of refuge after being accused of murder could not be put to death
without a trial before an assembly of elders of the accused person’s community.

God laid down the laws governing these trials. If a person killed someone using a metal
implement, that person would be designated a murderer and had to be executed. Similarly, anyone who killed
another with a stone would be executed. The same law applied to someone who killed another by punching or
manhandling him, or throwing something at him.

The act of
execution was to be carried out by the nearest relation of the deceased, known as the “avenger of blood”.

However, if
the person causing death did so accidentally and without evident intention of causing harm, then the matter
would go before the assembly for judgment. The assembly might decide that the accused was innocent, and send him
back to the city of refuge to which he first fled. The man then had to stay there until the death of the high
priest, after which he could return home. If, however, the person strayed outside the city of refuge, he would
become fair game for the “avenger of blood”.

God ordered
that nobody could be put to death on the testimony of only one witness. There had to be several witnesses to the
murder. A murderer’s life could not be ransomed. The principle of a life for a life was not
negotiable.

God
stipulated that bloodshed pollutes land. Atonement could not be made for land where blood had been shed except
by the blood of the person who had shed it.

The family
heads of clans descended from Joseph approached Moses and the leaders with a hypothetical question. When an
inheritance was passed on to daughters, would that inheritance not have to be shared with their husbands? That
being so, what would happen if the daughter decided to marry outside the tribe? Surely the tribe would lose part
of its inheritance in this way.

Moses said
the question highlighted an important issue. Every daughter who inherited land, he said, had to marry someone
from her father’s tribal clan. An inheritance, in other words, could not pass from tribe to tribe. The daughters
in question -Zelophehad's daughters – obediently married their cousins on their father’s
side.

These, then, were the commands and laws God handed down to the people of Israel on the plains of
Moab next to the Jordan across from Jericho.

Commentary on the 43rd parsha (portion) of the Torah. The
Torah consists of the five books of Moses, the first part of the Old
Testament.

To get to grips with this parsha, our Supermaven, Sigmund Albert Spinoza, interviews
Methuselah Solomon (an Ancient Elder). Supermaven is a modern philosopher who is trying to understand Judaism
and how we got where we are.

He will do this every week by investigating the Old Testament.

SAS:Methuselah, I’m sorry to
hear you have a headache.

MS:I heard you were coming to visit. My headaches go when you do.

SAS:Well, I don’t think I’ll vex you overmuch today. I find lots in this portion to admire.
There are clear signs here that our legal system was becoming more adaptive and sophisticated. Our early
practices were pretty barbaric, though, as this portion shows.

MS:Here we go …

SAS:You surely have to admit that the “avenger of blood” rule was a mistake. No matter the
apparent justness of their cause, these people were ordinary citizens who then found themselves duty bound to
inflict death on others. You turned members of your male population into potential executioners. This was not
the way to create a society of peaceful and gentle-minded souls.

MS:These were primitive times in which society had to be strictly regulated. Bear in mind
that before these rules, a much more violent, less regulated, anarchistic situation prevailed. These laws
were a great improvement—we see the beginnings of a fair and just system. Before this, the people did not
have any legal apparatus at their disposal. In this system, when a person killed an enemy in a clear cut case
of homicide, there was no need for delay. The blood avenger, or go’el, carried out his duty on behalf
of his family. Who better to carry out God’s penalty of a life for a life than the victim’s
next-of-kin?

SAS:The last person you want to carry out the penalty is the victim’s next-of-kin. You create
the potential for a blood feud between families. You also create the possibly that the second slaying will be
more brutal than the first. The “avenger of blood” has a license to kill and he can do it in his own time.
You make of him a premeditated killer, a hunter and a bloodthirsty executioner. I bet half of these
executions were public affairs, with aggrieved family members gathering to watch.

MS:Are you taking issue with the death penalty itself, the way it was carried out, or
both?

SAS:I think the death penalty is barbaric although no doubt you can mount a reasonable defense
of the practice. My first concern here is the method of punishment. At least put in place an official
executioner. Provided the person’s guilt was firmly established, he should have been dispatched privately,
and as painlessly as possible.

MS:The great virtue of this system, though, was that it highlighted the social dimension of
crime. A murder impacted powerfully on the victim’s family and its friendship circle. The killer’s penalty
was not only his death, but his brief time of confrontation with the “blood avenger” and other family
members. Those people most affected, the victim’s family, were the fitting and proper people to exact
punishment.

SAS:I disagree with you one hundred percent. This
method of retributive punishment made the crime more personal than social. Instead of showing the community
that a murder of a citizen was an act against the greater society, it made it a small matter between
families. If a community is bent on execution, it should make such an execution a community matter, and carry
it out in a uniform way on behalf of all the people – not just the victim’s family.

MS:When you talk of an act on behalf of all the people, you are making it all very abstract.
Most people are unaffected by a killing and do not think of an execution as an act carried out for their
benefit. The part of society most affected by a killing is the victim’s family. Justice meted out for their
particular benefit and satisfaction is the same justice that other members of society would benefit from
under other circumstances.

SAS:That’s a clever argument, Methuselah, but it has serious flaws. Laws should be general,
and not personalized. By arguing that the victim’s family
directly represents society’s interests, you imbue that family with far too much power. Its anger and its
cravings for blood are afforded judicial weight. You sanction retributive cruelty and the ethic of
revenge.

MS:How so?

SAS:Because the family’s blood avenger, with God’s approval, gets a right which no citizen
should ever get – the right to kill. He also gets the right to kill in his own way and at his own chosen
time. He becomes society’s hit man.

MS:Look the issue in the face. An execution is an execution, whoever carries it out. And the
method of the ancients struck at the core of the problem. It didn’t pull the killer out of public view or
give the execution a fake sense of a dispassionate termination of life. It left the killer in his community
to face the very people his actions impacted on. It was rough justice, without doubt, but it was real, it was
immediate, it came with a full and proportionate sense of moral outrage, and it showed any would-be killer
exactly what was in store for him. There was no hypocrisy here, Sigmund, or any pretense that an execution
was a detached and clinical act by a faceless, impartial authority. This was measure-for-measure stuff,
lasting for a long time because of its obvious appropriateness.

SAS:Well, your God is a measure-for-measure sort of guy. But I do compliment our ancient
fathers on a number of scores. The idea of cities of refuge was a very good one. It protected innocent people
from exactly the kind of fervent revenge-seeking that I’ve been railing against. Our forefathers obviously
knew that blood avengers were prone to excess diligence and they curtailed their powers. I feel sorry,
incidentally, for accidental killers who were hunted down by vengeful family members before they managed to
get to a city of refuge, or get their case heard.

MS:Do you think that the potential blood avenger would pick up a weapon and hack someone to
death if he didn’t have the general support of his community? Look at the passage before us. There had to be
witnesses attesting to the crime. Where doubt existed, the accused had the option of flight, and then appeal,
and family members knew that’s how things worked. If the would-be blood avenger butchered someone witnesses
felt was innocent, he himself would have been accused of murder.

SAS:So everyone played fair, and the license to kill was applied with tact and consideration?
Pull the other one! Your God set up a cruel and primitive method of trial and retribution and I’m sure many
died who shouldn’t have.

MS:You said earlier that you were against the death penalty. What do you think the people of
Israel should have done with murderers? Pardon them?

SAS:Of course not! My position is that killing is always wrong, and two wrongs can never make
a right. The state, in short, should not have the right to kill. Our forefathers had the option to imprison
murderers. Alternatively, we could have banished them from Jewish society while allowing their families to
stay within the camp.

MS:Now your naiveté is really showing. Our people did not have the resources to run a prison
system. While travelling in the wilderness, they clearly did not have this option. And in Canaan why should
we have set aside manpower and resources to look after people who had forfeited their right to be part of our
society?

SAS: I note, by the way, that rules of behavior apply only to murders of those within
the community. Murders outside were sanctioned and in many cases ordered by God.

MS: Sigmund, the laws were to govern community behavior. Neighboring tribes were not
in the community.

SAS:I think I’ll give up trying to talk with you about humanity as a whole. I’m going now. I
have a headache.

History

If you’d like to know more about the real history of our
extended Jewish family, read on.

The Yom Kippur War

The Yom Kippur War, as it known by the Israelis, was fought from 6 October to 26
October 1973. It was started by Egypt and Syria, who launched surprise attacks against Israel by crossing the
cease-fire lines in the Sinai and Golan Heights on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur.

Egypt and Syria wanted to reclaim the land lost in the Six Day War. They prepared for
war by launching military exercises near the Suez Canal and the Golan Heights, respectively. Aman, the IDF’s Directorate of Military Intelligence, did not believe war
was imminent. Israeli Minister of Defence, Moshe Dayan, did not order a pre-emptive strike or order a full
mobilization of troops.

Egypt and Syria launched lightning strikes that swept them past Israeli defensive
lines in the two war theatres. For the first few days they made significant advances.

In the meantime, Israeli officials flew to Washington to ask for weapons to be
airlifted to Israel. President Richard Nixon was put on the spot, because Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal warned
of an oil embargo against the USA if it rearmed Israel. Nixon, however, decided to help Israel. One deciding
factor was that, under pressure, Israel might have used nuclear weapons. The USA undertook a massive airlift
of conventional weapons including tanks, missiles and jets.

Israel managed to stem the
advancing tides and then launched counter-offensives.By 10 October, the Syrians had been pushed back to the pre-war border. Israeli Prime Minister Golda
Meir ordered the Israeli forces to press on, and they advanced to within 40km of Damascus by 14
October.By 15 October Israel was ready for a counter-attack in the Sinai
theatre.Operation Abiray-Lev (“Stouthearted Men”) was launched and a hole was opened in the Egyptian
defense.

By the end of the war Israeli forces were 100km from
Cairo.

The UN Security Council passed Resolution 338, calling
for a ceasefire on 22 October. Hostilities continued, but after two further resolutions were passed, the war
ended on 26 October. Israel suffered serious losses, with roughly 2700 troops killed and some 8000 wounded.
Close to 500 tanks were destroyed and approximately 150 planes lost.

The Agranat Commission, led by Supreme Court President
Shimon Agranat, held an inquiry into Israeli’s failings at the onset of the war. The commission held six
people principally responsible, including IDF Chief of Staff, David Elazar. The public wanted bigger scalps.
It called for the resignations of Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan. Meir and her cabinet did resign in April 1974,
and Yitzhak Rabin then headed the government until 1977.

In September 1978, US president Jimmy Carter made
history when he persuaded Sadat and new Israeli PM Menachem Begin to attend a summit at Camp David. This led
to the signing of an Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty in 1979. Egypt was expelled from the Arab League over this
peace agreement. His peace-making cost Sadat his life. He was assassinated by Islamic army members on 6
October 1981 at a parade commemorating the eighth anniversary of the war.

Here follows a discussion on this historical segment by Dad, Chaya and
Ben.

BEN:I always thought the
Israeli army and its intelligence services were tip-top. But here they were caught out
badly.

DAD:Indeed they were. They
were a fraction complacent, and it found them out. I suppose the important thing is that they learnt their
lesson.

CHAYA:It was a lesson that
cost 2700 lives.

DAD:Even if they’d been
better prepared many lives would have been lost. Still, the war might have progressed more
advantageously.

BEN:It’s interesting that
the Agranat Commission didn’t come down hard on Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan. In a sense, it protected
them.

DAD:It didn’t save them,
though. This episode shows how strongly the people insisted on accountability at the very highest
level.

CHAYA:That’s how it should
be. Still, you have to be sympathetic to Meir and Dayan. In a situation of perpetual tension it’s hard to
know when threats are real or when you’re jumping at shadows. Overreact, and you might provoke war when none
was on the horizon.

DAD:Ah well, nobody ever
said running the defense portfolio in Israel was easy. You have to be on your game 100% of the time, and you
have to be right most of the time too. There is internal opposition you have to cope with as well, and a
government made up of coalitions.

BEN:It’s interesting that
the Arab world viewed the Yom Kippur War, or the Fourth Arab-Israeli War, as a qualified
success.

DAD:Well, it certainly
dented Israel’s reputation and provided the Arab world with a degree of pride in their early successes.
Although the war ended in a stalemate, Israel was left to count some rather significant
costs.

BEN:But I’ve read some
military historians who believe Israel’s achievement in reversing its early defeats and then
counter-attacking in such a devastating manner was immense. Help from the USA certainly made things easier,
though.

CHAYA:Did Israel make any
territorial gains?

DAD:It gained territory in
the Golan Heights, but lost some in the Sinai. The outcome of this war is not to be measured in territorial
terms, though. The Egyptians viewed it as a victory in the sense that they could negotiate with the Israelis
as equals. Israel viewed it as a serious wake-up call. In many ways, it knocked national confidence, and was
by no means regarded as a victory.

BEN:It’s an extraordinary
irony that Anwar Sadat started a war with Israel on 6 October and was later assassinated on the same day
eight years.

DAD:Irony’s the wrong word,
Ben. The events were directly linked. Sadat’s assassins killed him for starting what they viewed as a just
war, and for then betraying the cause by dealing with the hated enemy.

CHAYA: Obviously if you claim to lead the Arab world you need to maintain a
hardcore stance or you won’t survive.

BEN: The same may be said for
those who lead Israel.

DAD:I’m afraid you’re both
right. Which Arab leader could possible return home with a two-state solution treaty in his pocket, and hope
to convince the entire region that he hadn’t “sold out”? Which Israeli leader could do the same, at that
time? This is a region where only extreme solutions seem ultimately acceptable.
Sadly.

CHAYA:I hope you’re wrong
and that a peace deal can be hammered out.

DAD:Me too, but I suspect
we’ll see more hammering of a different nature.

Sayings

Every Shabbat we read five short sayings that express, with typically Jewish wit and
humor, insightful reflections on this life of ours.

Here are tonight’s sayings:

·Even a secret agent can’t lie to a Jewish mother. (Peter Malkin)

·My grandmother was a Jewish juggler; she used to worry about six things at once.
(Richard Lewis)

·Alcohol may muddle the head, but troubles take it off altogether.

·A Jewish woman had two chickens. One got sick, so she made chicken soup out of the other one to
help the sick one get well. (Henny Youngman)

·Anytime a person goes into a delicatessen and orders pastrami on white bread,
somewhere a Jew dies. (Milton Berle)

Celebration of Great Lives

Every Friday night we celebrate the achievements of our Jewish family in contributing
to changing the world for the better and having an extraordinary impact on those around
them.

Helena Rubinstein
(1870-1965)

Born Chaja Rubinstein in Krakow, Poland, she
immigrated to Australia in 1902. She opened a shop in Melbourne, sold skin creams and changed her name to
Helena. The shop prospered and Helena left it in the care of her sister, Ceska, while she went to London to
expand her business. She met and married an American journalist and they had two children and eventually
settled in the USA. There, Rubinstein opened a string of beauty salons which became popular with the
department stores. An inspired innovator, Rubinstein trained her sales people to teach skin care and dietary
plans. The business gave employment to many women. She went on to develop a line of male cosmetics too. In
1938, after divorcing her husband, Rubinstein married a Georgian prince who was 20 years her junior. A strong
supporter of Israel, Rubinstein founded the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion of Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv. In
1953 she established the Helena Rubinstein Foundation that provided money for health and medical research. It
also donated money to the American Israel Cultural Foundation and provided scholarships to Israelis. In 1959
she represented the USA cosmetics industry at the American National Exhibition in Moscow. She died at 94,
working from her sick bed until the last.

Ayn Rand
(1905-1982)

Born Alissa Rosenbaum, in St. Petersburg, Rand was
an atheistic Jew who eschewed religion and mysticism. She was awarded a degree in history from the University
of Leningrad in 1924. When she was 21, she immigrated to the USA where she scraped a living in the wardrobe
department of RKO movies in Hollywood. After her stage play, Night of January 16th, was
produced on Broadway in 1935, Rand had enough money to write full-time. However, her first novel, We the Living (1936) was not well received. She then wrote a short novel,
Anthem, and saw a stage version of We the Living called The
Unconquered fail to awaken interest. Getting nowhere, she started reading screenplays for Paramount. Her
big break came after The Fountainhead was published in May 1943.
It received lukewarm reviews at first, but word spread and by 1949 it had sold half a million copies. In that
same year, a film version starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal appeared, with Rand as screenplay writer. In
1951 she and her husband, Frank O’Connor, moved to New York and Rand became the fulcrum of a social circle
that embraced her ideas. Her final novel, Atlas Shrugged, appeared
in 1957 and dealt with philosophical themes that Rand used to create her philosophy of Objectivism – an ethic
embracing the primacy of reason, individualism and free-market capitalism. This philosophy was promoted
through the Nathaniel Branden Institute, Branden being a friend and sometime lover. Rand’s ideas bred
enthusiastic discipleship, and economist Alan Greenspan (who later became chairman of the Federal Reserve)
was part of her inner circle. She had many critics, though, and her influence declined from the late ‘60s.
Still popular in some circles today her books have sold more than 25 million
copies.

Song

We will now sing a traditional song to conclude our Shabbat celebration. You have a
copy of the words, so please join in as we sing.

The song is sung

Farewell and an Invitation

Thank you for coming together to share our Shabbat. May you go out into the new week
with renewed strength, confidence and happiness.